


Once A King Or Queen

by RoryKurago



Series: Songs Of The Golden Age [1]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types
Genre: Battle Trees, Children dying of old age, Complete, During Canon, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Manipulative Aslan, Married Couple, Nostalgia, Nymphs & Dryads, Old Friends, Past Relationship(s), Post-The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Pseudo-History, Talking Trees, that time the Telmarines fucked everything up, that's a thing now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-18 12:29:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5928369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoryKurago/pseuds/RoryKurago
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter, more than the others, had difficulty readjusting to life in England. Susan berated, Edmund walked, Lucy talked, Peter--fought. The sooty walls, train tracks, and sandbags of London seemed offensive. All the old friends Lucy urged him to reconnect with seemed young and foolish. </p><p>“Wasn’t long after you left,” Trumpkin said, “that the Telmarines invaded. Those that survived retreated to the woods. And the trees… they retreated so deep into themselves that they haven’t been heard from again.”<br/>“And the dryads,” said Peter. “Did they retreat too?”<br/>Trumpkin peered down the boat at him and didn’t answer.<br/>“I don’t understand,” said Lucy. “How could Aslan have let this happen?”<br/>Trumpkin’s scoff was cynical. “Aslan? Thought he abandoned us when you lot did.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. All Of This Dust

**Author's Note:**

> _I might be better off_   
>  _Closing my eyes_   
>  _And God will come looking for me_   
>  _In time_
> 
>  
> 
> _All of this dust, all of this past_  
>  _All of this over and gone_  
>  _And never coming back_  
>  _All of this forgotten, not by me_
> 
> \--Sarah Bettens, "All Of This Past"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> According to my notes, I started this story In April, 2010, so I am so, SO immensely pleased to finally be finished it hahaha. I'm sorry to everyone who had to suffer through the long breaks with me and I hope you enjoy the ending as much as I enjoy actually having one.

Peter, more than the others, had difficulty readjusting to life in England.

They all struggled: frames too small to contain all the greatness into which they’d grown, limbs too light. Skin too thin, muscle too weak.

Susan berated them, less gently than accustomed. Her voice lacked the mellow richness of Queen Susan. Too light: it didn’t carry the weight of years and treaties wrought and bloodshed averted. The sound of it seemed to rankle her.

Edmund took to long walks alone. These infuriated their mother until she realised she couldn’t stop him.

Lucy pined. But everything about Lucy burned hot and bright, moreso now that she was back in a child’s body. She drew until her hands curled up with cramping; then she cried and cried. But when she stopped crying, she got out of bed, dressed, and went looking for ladybirds in the garden.

While they’d all had their responsibilities and duties, none of them could say they’d had the weight of an entire kingdom on their shoulders. The four had ruled as peacefully and fairly as possible but war had been unavoidable, and the things Peter had done to preserve their land weighed heavily on him, then as now. Some nights, try as he might, sleep had eluded him and he had been forced to lie awake staring at the ceiling, tallying the screams of those who fought and died for Narnia, and those who died against it.

Into that had come Eliaahn. After a mess of conspiracy, treason, finger-pointing and near-war with Calormen—peace. For Peter’s private quarters, if not for the public. For eight years, the dryad had been friend, confidante and lover. At last: someone Peter could tell his concerns to in confidence without worrying that they would reach his siblings or advisors and work either party into a fuss.

And then the Pevensies had fallen through the wardrobe.

For nearly a year Peter tried to find a way back and when he finally gave up it nearly broke him. His concentration faltered. His grades plummeted. His desperation to feel _something_ real and grounded in this world had him picking fights and hurling himself from bad decision to bad decision. He could see the worry in his siblings’ eyes every time he bypassed the dining room as the family was sitting to eat, and left the house. Susan had given up berating; she only watched now. Lucy was braver but had little more success: her way of trying for connection was to reminisce at length on how she missed Tumnus, the flowers, the trees. The trees. Peter looked sharply at her for that one but she was lying on her back on his bed, staring at the ceiling. Seeing something different than Peter did. Petals, not bodies, perhaps.

Her words evinced her empathy but gave no relief of the ache to be _home_ —home by the sea, by the woods. The sooty grey walls, train tracks, and sandbag bomb-shelters of London seemed offensive. All the old friends Lucy urged him to reconnect with seemed young and foolish. Unreal.

In time, Lucy admitted defeat too. Only Edmund, who took to coming to Peter’s room and sitting in silence while Peter sat at his desk staring out the window, seemed to have any true sense of empathy. Edmund’s own lady – a marquise from the Lone Islands – hadn’t yet accepted his proposal when the Pevensies went hunting for the White Hart, but he well understood.

In September that year, some eleven months after the wardrobe spat them back into the spare room, Peter sat down at the dinner table and smiled at Lucy when she offered him the dish of potatoes.

The next day, he and Edmund took a turn around the local park. For the first time in nearly a year they talked about the place they’d come from and everything left behind. Narnia; Cair Paravel; the sprawling parties under the stars; the murky smell of the forest; the queen consort, one hand on the swell of her pregnancy as she farewelled the hunting party from the battlements.

Surely, though neither brother said it, everyone they had known must be long dead and gone by now.

When they returned to the house, Peter found on his bed the sketch Lucy had done of Eliaahn shortly after their return. Lucy had made a series: lords and ladies and palace guards and places the Pevensies had been. At the time, Peter had crumpled the portrait into a ball and thrown it back at Lucy with an angry outburst. Now Lucy had smoothed the wrinkles and pressed the sketch under glass in a plain wooden frame. (Or perhaps she had done so back then, right after he threw it back in her face, knowing he would in time come to terms with it as the others had.)

Picking it up, Peter touched the glass very gently. Then he put the frame into his desk and closed the drawer.

Three weeks later, in a tube station on the way home from school, the cry of an all-too-familiar horn flung them back into Narnia.

…

At Cair Paravel, they stumbled through an arch next to the treasury into the vault of the rulers of old. A single long grand chamber, thick with dust but still glorious, held empty sarcophagi dedicated to themselves—the kings and queens of Cair Paravel and their successors. The graves were barely distinguishable by the carved figures lying in state on the capstones. Susan and Edmund stopped to examine particularly intricate ones. Lucy went to the walls, where hung the tatters of a line of rich tapestries apparently depicting the Pevensies' great deeds and history.

But Peter’s gaze was drawn to a sarcophagus near the end of the hall. This one had little decoration but a wealth of care and attention to detail. As on the Pevensies’ sarcophagi, the figure lay supine in state. This one’s hands clasped over the hilt of a stone likeness of Peter’s greatsword.

Stone scuffed. Edmund moved up beside him. “Pete…”

Peter laid a hand over the stone figure’s while Edmund diverted his eyes and read,

“Here lies Pellës, last… of the line of the Pevensies.”

Beside the figure’s head was a greening bronze medallion, pitted and rusting, its cord long since rotted away. Blazoned in the metal was the likeness of an acorn and a pinecone growing on the same branch, ringed about with a ribbon.

How strange and cruel the realisation that in the first month Peter had struggled to return, his child had lived and died.

“Fought valiantly for the peoples of Narnia,” Edmund read, “taken by arrowshot at the Battle of—”

Peter turned on his heel and strode out of the chamber. Blood welled through his fingers where he clutched the medallion so tightly it cut into flesh.

…

“Wasn’t long after you left that the Telmarines invaded," said Trumpkin. He peered up into the canopy as they rowed up the crystalline river. "Those that survived retreated to the woods. And the trees… they retreated so deep into themselves that they haven’t been heard from again.”

“And the dryads,” said Peter. “Did they retreat too?”

Trumpkin peered down the boat at him, head canted, and didn’t answer.

“I don’t understand,” Lucy murmured. “How could Aslan have let this happen?”

“Aslan?” Trumpkin’s scoff was cynical. “Thought he abandoned us when you lot did.”

…

“He didn’t stop,” said Susan, transfixed by the fallen bear with Trumpkin’s arrow in its eye.

“I think,” said Peter, “a lot has changed.”

…

When they found Caspian, the dwarves recommended that they seek the old forests—where magic still dwelt.

Some things had changed, they said. But not all.

Thus in the mountains Peter and an embassy of Caspian's folk sought the wildest places where even the Telmarines had not dared go, and here they found the last of the peoples of Narnia. The talking beasts, and half-men, the sprites and elementals and winged horses.

But not the trees. The trees slumbered too deep to wake, the old ones said.

They had suffered, the old ones said, and in that suffering could take no more and had withdrawn to the deepest reaches they could find, to no more look upon the world that hurt them so grievously.

They had a name for that sadness, the old ones said: they called it _el’yan_ , the kind of sadness born from stripping everything away until no option remained but to slough the tattered remains and become something else—to give up on one life and hope for better in another.

There was a song about it but Peter wasn’t listening to take much in. He instead asked the most forthcoming old one where the word had come from.

The squirrel looked at him with age-hazed eyes and said, _from the queen_. A thousand or more years ago a dowager queen of Cair Paravel had fought it and lost, giving her name to it in defeat. Too sharp for her age, the squirrel regarded him cannily. “The trees would know more. In the deepest woods, you may yet find some still close enough to the waking world to stir. You should ask them when you go to bring them Caspian’s cause.”

Peter said nothing. Yet when he later found himself in a fern-choked hollow bounded by trees as old as the stones of Narnia, the squirrel’s sly look came back to him.

He asked despite himself.

A ripple ran through the trees. He’d been shouting into open air with no response, but now motion shuffled through the canopy: the trees were listening.

He beseeched them again to come to Caspian’s aid—and added on the end the question of _el’yan_. The ferns rippled again. Genuine movement stirred the shadows.

She’d given up entirely to her dryad blood. Stepping through the undergrowth, Eliaahn approached as fey and remote as the White Hart so long ago. She was old—old in the way of the trees: robust but weathered, as if they had seen too much and taken the time passed into themselves. Her human aging had not been undone by the surrender: lines scored deeply around mouth and eyes. Mossy hair hung to her waist and her skin ran brown and green like old bark.

Only her eyes were as he remembered. Even they, however, regarded him with a kind of sad hostility. The restless stamping of hooves behind Peter brought him back to himself. The centaurs and the rest of the party from Caspian’s camp were waiting.

When Eliaahn did not speak, Peter understood: she was here only as witness.

He repeated his request for aid. A whispering took up, like a far-off wind through the canopy. The branches swayed. When their answer came, it seemed to come from all around him, scarcely a string of rising and falling tones on the wind. If he hadn’t been so practiced, he might have missed it.

They would not help.

“But why not?” Peter shouted up into the murky green. “If we have your help, we’ll win for certain! The Telmarines will be driven out. Without your help, we might lose—and then it’ll all be worse than before.”

The trees rustled but did not answer. The wind that carried their murmurs died away.

Peter shouted and raged but they spoke no more. Finally, in a fury, he drove his sword toward the ground.

A hand clasped his wrist before the point struck home.

Eliaahn’s palm was cool and hard on his skin, like the bark of a birch tree, but her expression was melancholic. “They will not come.” Her voice had the rasp of disuse.

“ _Why?_ ”

“They are afraid of men’s axes.”

“If we defeat Miraz’s army, no one will ever come to cut them again!”

“They suffered greatly in the first coming. Untold numbers fell to the fires of Caspian the First.” Her expression grew remote. “You were not here to witness the darkness that settled over the land. You would not understand.” Releasing his arm, she stepped back. “Many who were thought strong enough to weather any storm fell before it.

“The trees will not come,” she said again. “If the future is as dark as you say, you must return to your people. They will have need of you.”

The ferns absorbed her as she passed back into the undergrowth.

Peter made to follow but he quickly lost her trail in the turns of the trees and the thick tangle of undergrowth. His audience was over. He had no choice but to turn and go back the way the party had come, though he sensed eyes on him all the way out of the hills.

…

Lucy awaited the ragged embassy at the edge of camp. Her face fell when Peter shook his head. She stopped trotting towards them. Several steps behind her, Edmund’s face was grave.

“We should tell Caspian,” was all he said.

He and Lucy started to fall in step with the party but Peter, smarting from his failure to bring their most stalwart of potential allies on board, strode past without acknowledging either.

Behind him he heard Lucy say, “I told you I should have gone.”

…

Caspian’s dismissive response ground salt into the wounds—old and new. His eyes followed Peter as Peter moved towards the War Room.

 _Some High King_ , they seemed to say.

Peter’s pride flared.

…

His insistence on assaulting the Telmarine stronghold was – he told himself at the time – logical. It wasn’t the first time he’d led an assault on an enemy castle. They didn’t need the trees with the amassed force of the rest of old Narnia behind them.

But Susan’s accusation as they struggled with the gate wheel cut to the bone, and the pride, resignation, and fear of the Narnians caught behind the portcullis were haunting.

Peter had never felt so small – so insignificant – as watching the centaurs exchange bowed heads through the grille and then riding away.

At daybreak, he couldn’t meet the eyes of the centauress who approached the survivors. Her herd leader’s blood was on Peter’s hands. More, it had been spilled purely by Peter’s pride and spite.

He was better than this. Wasn’t he?

Lucy didn’t blame him, but Susan’s eyes followed him into his cavern quarters from beneath stormy brows. He couldn’t help but see resonance between her expression and Caspian’s.

…

“You know you can’t do this alone,” crooned Jadis. Her hand stretched from the mirror, pulling, drawing.

And that, Peter thought, was the most truthful thing she has ever said. He was appalled to sickness by how readily he agreed with her even as the point of his sword dipped.

…

Susan didn’t even look at him after the ice broke. Her disapproval – her disappointment – was directed only at Caspian.

It wasn’t that Peter hadn’t disappointed her. She just didn’t expect any better.

He sat unmoving for a very long time beside the Stone Table, staring up at the relief of Aslan framed by melting ice.

…

“I have,” said Lucy, “an idea.”

Before them the Telmarines marched up the hill brilliant and cold in silver armour, and even the pre-noon sun couldn’t shake the chill that seemed to have settled in Peter's bones the moment he lowered his sword before Jadis. It had felt like her hand had reached out from the mirror and clenched around his insides. Even as his grip resettled on the hilt of his sword, threads of ice seemed to spread and thicken through his guts the way frost overtook a windowpane.

His pride had gotten them nowhere. Had even gotten Narnians – good, brave Narnians who'd followed a king who'd abandoned their ancestors – killed.

He looked to Lucy. Her faith had yet to waver.

Peter bowed his head. “You should have gone.”

…

The trees came. Charging across the battlefield, tearing up earth and enemy soldiers alike – slaughtering the descendants of their maulers – they came.

The battle was over almost before the Telmarines realised the tide had turned. All that was left was for the Narnians to mop up the remains and round up the deserters.

As evening settled over the field, Peter sought her out. In the far distance he could still hear the horns of the long-range patrols hunting down stragglers and escorting them back to Narnian custody in sullen twos and threes.

Eliaahn sat on the grass in a grove of talking trees, swaying as she listened to their rustling speech with closed eyes. Muck and grime from cleaning up the field still caked her, although judging by the dampness around her face the worst had been washed away. Since the grove hadn’t been here that morning, Peter assumed the trees had elected to form a temporary resting place whilst a decision was made on where to proceed from here. Dotted amongst the trunks sat other dryads in tailors’ seats, their mouths slack, expressions as ecstatic as Eliaahn’s.

Peter doubted they noticed his arrival. He picked his way between the roots and settled cross-legged onto the grass opposite Eliaahn, taking care not to jostle his dislocated arm in its sling. What the adrenaline of the battle had dulled had returned with a vengeance as a dwarf helped him out of his armour. This was the first true stillness he’d felt since the sun rose on the battlefield.

To distract himself from the ache, he took the opportunity to more closely observe the changes in her. Fine green veins threaded her eyelids where the flesh still pulled taut. Her hands, where they sank into the grass at her sides, were gnarled and knotted like an old woman’s. An iridescent beetle crawled over a tangle of hair. Absently, she raised a hand to it and it flew away.

From the look of her, Peter guessed she had spent twenty more years in Cair Paravel before giving in to despair—long enough to see their son die and the last of their legacy crumble. Yet she was still beautiful. And with her face slack and blissful, he glimpsed an echo of the woman waving farewell from the battlements a thousand years ago.

“You named him Pellës.”

She opened her eyes. “For my father. His name was Kellës.” Her gaze dropped to his waist. “You retrieved your sword. The nobles laid it to rest in the crypt when Pellës died but the Telmarines raided the rubble when they took Cair Paravel. We thought it was lost.”

“I’m thinking of giving it to Caspian,” Peter admitted, fingering the familiar hilt. “It’s… fitting. A true Narnian sword for a true Narnian ruler.” He fell silent, trying to think how to say what came next. The clamour of the camp at the top of the hill seemed very far away. “Tell me about him. Pellës.”

“He was good. Strong. But rash.” She looked to Peter.

He averted his eyes, thinking of fights in schoolyards and tube stations. When he glanced up, a line had appeared between her brows.

“A questing army came through the southern forests of what is now Telmar,” she said, “riding from Ushakovo. It was the third year of his reign. Pellës the Bold, they called him.”

Peter smiled to think how gleeful Lucy would be at that.

“There was a four-year campaign to hold the boundaries,” Eliaahn said. “After four years, we had almost driven them back through mountains and their commanders were nearly ready to capitulate to peace talks. Pellës was commanding the centre with Lord Orlaigh.”

“Lord Orlaigh?” interrupted Peter. “That old badger?” The thought was almost laughable as, last Peter remembered him, Orlaigh had been a battered old solider content to retire to his country house and bounce grandchildren on his knee. A tough old boot, certainly, but he must have been nearly ten years old at the time—getting on for a badger, though Narnians lived longer.

Eliaahn’s eyes were sharp as they fixed Peter with a reproachful stare. “Lords Orlaigh and Perci, _Horvi_ Alloa, and Ladies Methven, Verzasca, and Beberrua left their holdings to form a council after your departure. To minister to the kingdom until Pellës came of age. They remained on after he took the throne to assist him.”

Peter remembered centaur Alloa as Narnia’s first General after the Hundred Year Winter, and Beberrua had commanded the Royal Navy, but the others had little to do with martial matters. To hear they had helped rule Narnia was a shock. Even the _ladies_ : Methven, Verzasca, Beberrua—

“ _Lady_ Beberrua?” he repeated.

“Promoted from marquise in her thirty-sixth year for service to the realm.”

“She never married then?”

Eliaahn regarded him with hereto-unseen compassion. “She married. Well and happily. Not the tidings King Edmund would choose to hear, I imagine. Yet I would think, absent other option, he would be contented to hear Duminka led a happy, fruitful life. Queen Susan’s edict kept slavery out of the Lone Islands for a long time on the power of Duminka and hers.”

“She had children too, then?” Peter said dully. Only after it was out did he realise how callous it might sound.

“Four,” Eliaahn said mildly. “Her younger two served in the navies. The second eldest was at the Battle of Gadiri.” A slow smile creased her cheeks. “He and Pellës forever argued about which of them was the better horseman. Pellës called Nestu 'son of a squid', Nestu called Pellës 'son of a tree', and neither took any notice of the other.”

Peter smiled. “Sounds like me and Ed when we were—”

Boys. The inscription on Pellës’ tomb came back to Peter. The third year of Pellës’ reign, a four-year campaign… Aslan, Pellës had only been twenty-four!

As if she knew what was passing through Peter’s mind, Eliaahn regarded him gravely. “We expected them to cave before winter. Their need for food would have given us the leverage to negotiate peaceful surrender. Half their workforce was dead on the field. It should have happened that way.

“Instead,” she said, “they made one last push to break through our lines.”

Peter guessed the ending of this tale. A heaviness descended on him like that he’d struggled with before the White Witch.

“They gathered their last troops at the mouth of the Plains of Gadiri and rallied for a final stand. We didn’t know they’d brokered a deal with the Calormene.

“We thought they were broken. Not three days before, Lady Verzasca took the main body of our army north to the Wildlands where the giants were encroaching again in our distraction. Pellës was supposed to go with Verzasca, but after four years he wanted to personally attend to the Upchaly surrender. We left four thousand to chase them back over the border and enforce peace talks. The Calormene marched six thousand _sir’ayi_ over the mountains to come at us from the south while we focused on the Upchaly in the west. It was a rout.”

Oddly viscous tears slipped down Eliaahn’s cheeks, showing green where they hit her white chemise. “The Upchaly captured Pellës and dragged him to the top of foothills. They demanded he yield, publicly, before the eyes of the last of the Narnian army. A Calormene bowman shot him in the eye when he refused.

“Lady Verzasca returned with the army and obliterated both the Calormene and the Upchaly with help from Arcenland. After the campaign was over, she marched armies right into Tashbaan and Ushakovo and put sword to Tisroc and the _Koryn_ ’s throats to demand their unconditional surrender.

“The people took to calling her Verzasca LionHeart after that,” she added. “They changed Pellës’ name too. They called him The Defiant.”

The trees overheard seemed to rustle more quietly. Or perhaps it was that Peter could hardly hear them over the ringing in his ears.

So dazedly he was barely aware of it, he reached for her hand. She let him take it.

They sat hand-in-hand amid the grass and clover until the breeze chilled Peter’s sweat-soaked tunic and the hairs rose on his arms. Eliaahn’s eyes were closed to the wind; mouth open, she breathed deeply through her nose—drawing in the scents of torn grass, blood, and raw earth like she was scenting wine at a banquet, although it gave her less pleasure. Again he saw a glimmer of his wife beneath the wrinkles of ages.

Her hand was still cool and hard in his. Fingerpads too smooth for skin, knuckles too swollen for the youth he remembered. Disentangling their fingers, Peter gently turned her hand over. Wood oil lined the cracks of her palm—someone’s bow; he hadn’t known whether the dryads had taken part in the fighting but he supposed this was his answer. He spared a moment to ponder whether the bow’s owner still drew breath and trailed a finger over the darkened lines. In the deepest of them was caked something darker than wood oil. Absently, he scratched a bit clean with a fingernail.

Eliaahn touched his wrist. She now turned his hand over and examined it. One finger brushed the roughness in the creases of his fingers where blood clotted stiffly: his own, from the cut in the room of sarcophagi. He’d bandaged it for the fight with Miraz but sweat had soaked the bandage and loosened the scabs. At some point in the ensuing melee the wounds had opened again and bled.

Now he was aware of them, they pulsed with heat: half a dozen tiny heartbeats, ripe with itching from a healing ointment applied by a medic after the battle. Each cut stung with the opening and closing of his hand. The healer had told him to air them for a while before covering them again but Peter doubted they would heal inside a week.

Eliaahn regarded the wounds. There seemed – if he looked closely – to be a trace of surprise in her neutral expression. _You bleed like us,_ it seemed to say.

Without releasing his hand, she raised her eyes. As they had nine years ago – a thousand years ago – the age of them took him aback.

“Where you go,” she said, “when you go this time—I can’t follow.”

As with the old squirrel, Peter didn’t reply. Instead he closed his hand gently around hers and kissed the back of her palm. Her skin smelled of sap, moss, and damp leaves. It was faintly rough against his lips. He rested his head against her forearm.

His back ached. His arm ached. All of him ached. He was out of practice at swordplay and out of shape.

Eliaahn pressed her thumb lightly over the deepest of his cuts. The throbbing in his fingertip subsided. Peter closed his eyes. Somewhere over his head, the trees murmured to each other, and the communing dryads were humming – to themselves, to the trees, Peter didn’t know – but it was so low and sweet he was only becoming aware of it now.

With eyes closed, the camp seemed impossibly far away. He would never make it back to his pallet. He thought he might stay here and rest. He might, despite the clammy damp of his tunic clinging to him and the twinging through his sides and thighs, sleep.

He wanted to sleep. Maybe he would sleep for a thousand years.

“I can ask,” he said.

Eliaahn was humming now: a gentle, wordless song he imagined might have put their child to sleep more nights than Peter could conceive of never having witnessed.

“Aslan—” Peter began.

Eliaahn’s hand withdrew from his.

Peter raised his head.

Her smile was sad and bitter. Her eyes in the settling night were pits that glittered in the dark, reflecting the far-off campfires. “I asked. Many times. He would tell me neither if you would return, nor where you had gone. He would only say ‘away’. And when I asked if I could not go where you had gone, he told me my place was this world and I had work left undone. And then he went away himself.

“He was there today,” she added. “When Queen Lucy came for us. This time, he did not speak to me at all. I think he has said all he has to say.”

Without a sound, she rose and left the grove. The grass sprang back as if she hadn’t passed.

Only with his hand raised before his mouth did Peter recognise the smell of dried blood from beneath his nails.


	2. All Of This Past

It rained hard for three days after the battle. Lighter showers persisted for a week after that. It was Aslan, Lucy mused aloud, washing away the worst of the blood.

“The worst of the blood on the ground, perhaps,” said Caspian. His expression was grim. “But _in_ it… These past centuries have stained Narnia in a way that will not be so easily erased, I think. Blood has sunk deep into the soil. True cleansing will be slow.”

Peter, flexing his hand, silently agreed.

…

Mopping up after Miraz took the better part of a week. The rule of the Telmarines, more.

The process was sometimes sweet: rediscovering a forgotten tune, a flower, the descendants of old friends.

More often it was unpleasant: peeling away layers of corruption like necrotic flesh, and tending the wounds of survivors. In those first days, the Pevensies and surviving leaders of the rebellion found themselves haphazardly choreographing the struggle of a hundred races to pull clear of the wreckage. They had to re-learn independence. It was not easy.

Many Narnians – Old and new – came to the Pevensies seeking answers. To some, the siblings were able to give guidance. They lent helping hands where possible, reunited families, dispensed rudimentary justice. Always they deferred to Caspian, who seemed even less comfortable with the arrangement than Peter.

Lucy took over marshalling the medical facilities. She had kept abreast of the latest sensibilities of the Red Cross in England; now she worked with a council of Healers and physicians (several of them Telmarine) to piece together hospitals and care for the needful.

Edmund went with the scouting parties. They brought back game and fugitive Telmarines in near equal numbers, trying to secure and feed a camp that swelled daily as Narnians emerged from hiding to meet their liberators in spite of the downpour. Even perpetually wet socks didn’t seem to bother Edmund. He returned to camp each day muddy but smiling, more energetic and at ease than Peter remembered him ever being in England.

Susan, for her part, dredged up all the diplomatic expertise of years of hard lessons. Persuading, chastising, and charming, she attempted to broker new treaties and understandings on which a new Narnia could be founded. Caspian was instrumental.

Peter took no pleasure in watching Caspian and Susan find equals in each other. Their labours often took them late into the night and Peter observed with no small measure of nostalgia and alarm as they tracked a trajectory frightfully similar to his own with Eliaahn. He remembered the exhaustion of politics. The relief offered by the shoulder of a compatriot; the thrill of debate, co-operation, resolution.

If Susan fell for Caspian—

…

Narnia finally had the luxury to grieve.

The minotaur who gave his life at the gate was the first to be memorialised when the rain let up. They lit a pyre before the How.

“Bophos,” intoned his closest companions, laying a wreath on the flames. His name and spirit would be carried with the rising cinders to Aslan’s Country.

One by one, others lost in the campaign were named and sent to freedom. One by one, the mourners drifted away.

At dusk, Peter stood alone before the flames. The blaze that had swept higher than the tallest centaur had dulled to a bed of torpid coals licked by occasional tongues of flame, and clouds gathered in the corners of the sky.

Peter left the lea of a column to crouch by the fire. He never had been much good at flower crowns, despite the girls’ best efforts, but a few springs of willow and sweet woodruff came together in a rough circlet in his hands. He held it before him for a moment.

Time compressed there: thirteen hundred years in the shape of a hundred tiny leaves and a spray of white blossoms so small they were almost invisible. A millennium so light it was barely there.

The ragged ends in the circlet scraped his brow as he touched it to his forehead. “Pellës.”

He gently laid the circlet on the pyre. Greenery sizzled. Curls of smoke rolled up from the wreath. Somewhere on the other side of the How, mourners put up a dirge: sweet voices and wailing sighs.

Peter remained kneeling to watch each leaf turn to ash.

…

Lucy sat in the corridor with her back to the wall as Peter passed by in the way to bed. He paused. He was on the verge of asking why she wasn’t on her way to bed when he noticed the other wall:

Tumnus flickered in the torchlight, forever paused beneath the lamppost. Always just about to ask a little girl to tea.

Lucy peered up at Peter with clean tracks through a layer of soot on her cheeks and a half-worked wreath beside her. In her lap lay a faun’s double-piped flute.

He sat down beside her and put an arm around her shoulders. They stayed that eay for a long time. Peter said nothing when wetness began to spot his shirt.

…

The next day, he drew up at the door of a mess tent to observe Susan and Caspian eating together. Their heads were close over a trestle tabl, oilcoats dripping on the benches beside them. They hadn’t stopped work for lunch: although the drumming rain of another downpour drowned their words, they spoke rapidly, intently.

It set a deep unease in Peter’s gut.

As shy and familiar and sweetly hopeful as they were becoming, eventually the Pevensies would leave.

Susan was more attached to England – to their world – than even Edmund, who had reconciled his two lives the best of the siblings. When the Pevensies inevitably left, it might break Susan’s heart. It might sour her to Narnia forever.

Caspian certainly acted as if he refused to contemplate the reality of the Pevensies’ indeterminate but inescapable departure. Daily he seemed to slip deeper into the delusion that if he simply didn’t acknowledge it, it would never come to pass. Peter tried not to wonder if the peoples of Old Narnia had once held such conviction about the oncoming horror of the Telmarines.

He resolved to watch and wait. It hadn’t worked in the Giants’ War, to be sure, but it had saved them a lot of trouble with many of Queen Susan’s suitors.

…

Queen Prunaprismia came to the How in the midst of another deluge. (Too many days waiting for the rain to clear off, the royals agreed.)

A Telmarine messenger came almost timidly up the hill to where Miraz’s campaign tents had been co-opted into a command centre in front of the How. Lucy saw him coming and excused herself.

The herald spread his feet, smoothed rain from his hair and drew in a breath. “Her most gracious Majesty, Queen Prunaprismia, Queen Mother—”

Peter caught Susan’s sideways look that seemed to say, _skip to the point._

“—Empress of Narn—”

The minotaur who had taken to haunting Caspian’s shoulder rose to her feet with a rumble.

“... I," stuttered the herald. "... that is to say… a _hem_. Her Majesty wishes an audience with His Highness, Prince—”

“King,” corrected Edmund flatly. Lucy gave him a look as if to say _not this again._

“—King Caspian.”

It galled Peter that Caspian didn’t even glance his way before agreeing. It might have been a show of power, but Peter didn’t think Caspian had that much diplomatic guile yet. He was simply growing into the throne.

An insidious part of Peter whispered that Peter’s resistance rose only from the fact that Caspian was settling more readily into the crown than had the Pevensies. A childish part of Peter wanted to see Caspian struggle. As if not doing so indicated some innate superiority. As if it might prompt Susan to allow Caspian dangerous intimacies.

Susan was frowning at Peter with wrinkled brow as if she sensed his musings, but the Telmarines were riding up the hill and Trumpkin had taken the opportunity to inform Caspian in no uncertain terms that this was a mistake. She turned her attention to smoothing tensions before Prunaprismia could arrive to the scene of a brawl.

The dowager queen came in full state. Heralds and attendants and ladies-in-waiting all slogging up the field at her heels, and before them all: the surviving Council of Lords, resplendently befurred and brocaded, and miserable.

Prunaprismia herself was spotted with damp where the embroidered canopy held over her head by four liveried riders dripped, but her expression was composed.

If she thought anything of the Narnians’ new quarters, it didn’t show.

“I come to offer Our full and unconditional surrender,” she announced from horseback, pre-empting the herald who started forward. He didn’t look piqued so much as relieved; his nervous glance at the minotaur was poorly hidden.

Caspian seemed taken aback but quickly recovered. He rose to his feet with a solemn nod as though he’d expected nothing less. Susan smothered a smile.

Apparently at a loss, the herald looked to an old man bearing an ornate chain of office who rode slightly behind the Queen beneath his own canopy. The old man raised his eyebrows and inclined his head to the Prunaprismia, who in the meantime had dismounted and begun to approach.

Flowers and spreading creepers that had begun to spring up across the battlefield snapped and popped beneath her boots. Peter felt more than heard the angry murmurs of greenthumbs behind him; the Telmarine retinue had won no friends tramping through the greening battlefield.

Prunaprismia’s son was not with her, Peter noted. She was proud and brave but not foolish. Although the Pevensies and Caspian had decreed a peaceful transition, advocates for a harder line were vocal. Peter wondered if Prunaprismia knew where she trod as she crossed the duelling ground. He wondered if Eliaahn had ever carried Pellës on embassies. He wondered if she had been there when he was carried home from the last.

Prunaprismia came to a clipped halt before the table. Rain beaded her hair like seed pearls—the finest jewellery she wore. In contrast with her council, she was simply dressed and without sign of office save for the crown on her head. Caspian stepped out from behind the table to meet her.

From the way a muscle jumped in her jaw and her eyes fixed unblinking on her nephew’s face, Peter fully expected her to turn traitor and flourish a knife hilt-deep into Caspian’s chest. Peter tensed, sensing Edmund do the same beside him, and looked immediately to her escort. Trumpkin, the minotaur, and the Narnian guards did the same.

Prunaprismia’s chin lifted. She sank to one knee, heedless of the mud on her boots and stiff skirts, and said, “My King.”

This time Caspian didn’t falter.

As a gesture of good faith, he allowed her to bring the foremost of the Council in out of the rain and had the brazier stoked for them. It was, his eyes said, more than they deserved.

Only once during the audience did he glance back to Susan. A smile lit his face to see her nod of approval. His whole posture seemed to lift and lighten.

Peter took another draught of wine.

…

Even with Prunaprismia’s pledge of aid and non-resistance, re-establishing Narnian order was a tiring endeavour. Caspian now had meetings with Telmarine ambassadors to tackle, which Susan oversaw, often accompanied by a second Pevensie, depending on the subject.

Meanwhile, Peter avoided his wife. Or she avoided him. The trees had taken to maintaining a perimeter around the amorphous body of the camp. They seemed livelier each day: more communication singing between groves, more dryads and hamadryads joining the evening dances. Although several had taken corporeal form like Eliaahn, many chose to remain insubstantial. Drifts of petals and leaves floated down camp avenues and paths in increasingly daring bursts of colour. Peter was reminded uncomfortably of the Hundred-Year Winter campaign.

It was this he was mulling over when Caspian found him atop Aslan’s How.

The rain was long gone but the air still smelled strongly of rich, damp earth and wet cloth. (Edmund’s socks had been banished from the Pevensies’ cavern chambers.)

Caspian slung himself down on the stone slab and offered Peter a waterskin. “Something troubles you, King Peter?”

“No. I was just thinking: so much has changed since we were last here.”

This vantage overlooked the battlefield. Deep gashes in the earth still showed like wounds but the field had been overrun with wildflowers. Green like velvet rolled away down the hill beneath swathes of yellow, orange, purple, and red. Here and there wandered figures plaiting wreathes as they went. Where Peter had fought Miraz, dreamy blue thistles and alpine poppies carpeted the ground. Where the last Telmarine had surrendered waved a patch of dusk-purple pansies. Nature spirits memorialising the battle, Peter supposed. The battle, and the end of an Age.

“Many things have changed, I think,” said Caspian. He grimaced. “Most of them not for the better.”

Peter paused in lifting the skin to his mouth. “If the last weeks are anything to judge by,” he said, putting a hand on Caspian’s shoulder, “you are as much a Narnian as any other. And there’s hope for the land yet.”

Caspian ducked his head a fraction. “Thank you, _irmão_. I appreciate that greatly. Especially from you.”

Peter eyed him critically. “Although you wouldn’t mind hearing it from Susan.”

“I… I have only the highest esteem for Queen Susan—”

Peter chuckled and raised the skin. “Easy, mate. I think it’s safe to say the feeling is mutual.”

“Really? You think so?”

Peter smoothed a wince at Caspian’s earnest eagerness. “If I know Su. But Caspian… we _are_ leaving. You know that, right?”

Caspian was silent, hands twisting in his lap. He broodily took stock of the activity in the field below instead of replying. At the edge of the meadow, two gorillas, a ram, and several mustelids were constructing a rock cairn beside an elm, carefully peeling back the nasturtiums blanketing the ground.

Caspian scrutinised their labours with a line between his brows. Sunset wasn’t far off; rimed in gold, he was the picture of a Narnian lord. He would have looked at home leaning on a balustrade at Cair Paravel watching the ships come in.

The thought struck Peter with the unique sort of pang he’d thought he’d finally outgrown. Unconsciously, he thumbed the healing cuts on his hand. They had almost fully closed despite his daily labours.

“I knew,” said Caspian at last, “that you must be leaving at some point. It is not in your nature to linger so long, no?” He tried for a smile. “But I think perhaps your departure is not for a long time yet. If the gods are willing, you will stay with us for a while.” Slapping Peter on the back, Caspian rose to his feet. “Such dark thoughts! Come, drink! There is a party beginning down there. We should not keep our loyal subjects waiting. Tomorrow we go to the castle; this is our last night under open skies. Let us enjoy it!”

Peter finally took a swig from the skin and choked. “This isn’t water!”

Caspian hooked both thumbs into his sword belt, grinning. “The dwarves say that ‘hiding’ is not such a good place for brewing good ale. They say the centaurs’ wild wine is much better. I think it’s a touch on the bitter side.”

“You don’t say,” Peter wheezed, wiping his mouth with the back of a hand.

“Perhaps you will find Telmarine port more to your taste. But tonight—” Caspian gripped Peter’s arm and pulled him up to level ground. “—this is what we have. Whatever your thoughts on the taste, it is very strong.” Taking the wine, Caspian drank deeply. “And I intend to ask your sister for a dance—if she is amenable. I do not think I am brave enough to do that without ‘assistance’.”

They started down the How.

Peter took back the skin warily. He bit down a cough: the second swig burned as much as the first. A third, smaller one was more tolerable. “Su only bites the heads off school boys,” he wheezed. Composing himself, he added, “And only when they can’t be turned away by gentler means.”

Caspian’s laugh didn’t seem to be about Peter’s watering eyes. “Perhaps,” he said slyly, “you will ask someone for a dance yourself?”

Peter scowled and took another measured draught from the skin. How many years since he danced with his wife? What if she wouldn’t have him? Certainly she’d made no attempt to seek him out since the conversation in the grove.

About to speak, Peter caught the sounds of bells, flutes, and drumming from campfires scattered through the woods. He looked to Caspian. The Telmarine—the Narnian grinned and, thumping Peter on the shoulder with a cheerful _what did I tell you_ expression, jogged ahead.

The lower they got, the rowdier the sounds of early revellers and louder the music. Soon Peter picked out some sort of stringed instrument, and the ululations of singing in a handful of languages. Memories rose of other nights spent dancing around fires under the stars: lovers swapping wreaths redolent with perfume and flowers, the smell of fresh greenery on skin, free-flowing wine, the softness of fine Archeni lawn on his chest as she pulled him close—

He stopped walking. They had reached the top of the boot-packed path into camp. Suddenly he was very uncertain. Light-headed as if the wine had gone straight to his head, certainly, but also unsure of himself in a way he hadn’t been since the Pevensies’ coronation party.

Caspian halted with one foot on the path. “King Peter—” Sighing, he climbed back to Peter and gripped him by the shoulders. “You are worried about that woman, no? The dryad? Susan says… she was your wife. That you no longer speak. But this is a party. We must celebrate the end of bad blood, and new beginnings! Surely she wishes to begin anew as well.”

Peter chewed his tongue and looked past Caspian. Somewhere down there was someone he had missed and mourned for nearly a year, and now that he had only to step out and find her, he was surprised to find himself equally full of longing and dread.

Caspian squeezing his shoulder brought him back to the present. “Hey, _irmão_ : the worst she can do is refuse you, yes? And I think you have survived far worse. You are brave. Be brave in this.”

Peter stared at him. It should have been less reassuring to get a pep talk from a boy over a thousand years younger. Peter’s pride twinged. He nearly brushed Caspian’s hands away. And yet, he reflected, they were probably about the same age. Both had survived these last weeks of war, and the treacheries of diplomacy with Telmarine hold-outs. And Caspian had proven himself if not yet a king of compassion and wisdom to equal the Pevensies, then at least a stalwart, honest young man with the potential to become one.

Gripping Caspian’s shoulder in return, Peter smiled. “You’re right. I hadn’t thought of it like that. All right: let’s go find the women.”

…

The wine had most certainly gone to Peter’s head by the time he found them. A tangy bitterness lingered on his tongue. He lifted a cup of honey mead from the tray of a passing nymph and sipped it as he approached the fire to which he had been directed.

Lucy had ribbons and primroses twined through her hair. With one hand extended to a satyr strumming a lyre, she gyrated her hips and bent back to face the sky, one hand curling upward like smoke. Someone had found an old-style gown in her size. Metallic threads in her braids caught the firelight as she danced. She looked like her old self—her adult self.

Peter had to shake his head to clear the vision.

The music was faster than he remembered—less courtly, and with a flavour he didn’t recognise: Calormene, maybe, or even Telmarine. Other revellers seated in a circle around the fire chimed finger-cymbals and beat painted drums, or clapped to Lucy’s dance. Edmund was nowhere to be seen.

Susan sat between two nymphs, dressed in red and predictably bearing a crown of Black-Eyed Susans. Peter was sure they weren’t in season, but several nymphs in her retinue looked mightily smug as they swayed in their seats. Susan tapped her knees to the music. She refused to dance, but she couldn’t wholly resist it. She never could. Sunny petals showed brilliantly against her hair as she swayed, the Narnian Queen of the South capped in gold like the sands.

Caspian hung back as Peter crouched to address a drummer he recognised. When Peter glanced back, Caspian’s expression was dazed. Apprehensive. His mouth hung slightly open and his eyes were fixed on Susan. As if sensing Peter’s attention, his eyes flicked to the High King.

Peter couldn’t help smiling. Brave, hmm?

Caspian grinned helplessly and then drew a deep breath, straightened his shoulders, and stepped clear of the trees.

Peter stood, opening his mouth to say something—perhaps share a word of courage to return the favour. A hand grasped his.

“Peter!” Lucy shrieked, and dragged him into the circle.

He barely managed to hand his cup to someone before the dancers paired up, linked arms, and began a jig. Peter was surprised to find it one he actually recognised. Lucy threaded her arm through his and raised her free hand above her head. Her laughter was infectious.

Despite himself, Peter smiled and mimicked her. Arm in arm, they whirled and weaved to the drums.

Lucy slipped her hand into Peter’s. “Spin me!”

She swung away as dancers all around the fire did the same. Grinning, Peter spun her back. The observers cheered.

He was out of practice at this too: he and Lucy collided. Heaving with laughter, they untangled their limbs, re-linked elbows, and started again. Again, the observers howled.

The music changed. Someone began to sing—an old song, a true Narnian song. Meeting eyes with Lucy, Peter began to sing along—first reluctantly and then whole-heartedly.

This song was about a time the river gods argued about whose watercourse held more wealth until in a fit of pique one turned all the fish who swam his tributaries gold. Delighted, fishermen tried to catch them all and collect their scales. One partner of each pair was a fisher; the other, a fish. Peter sang the fisher’s part; Lucy – gleefully – the fish.

He eyes flashed as they whirled. He flowers and ribbons blurred.

There was a drum-break for the chorus. With a wild laugh, Lucy broke free of Peter and circled around the fire to her next partner as other dancers did the same—the ‘fish’ escaping the fisher. Peter found his next partner a faun so young he barely had horns yet. Grinning, Peter swung the youth into a pirouette.

Songs mingled and swelled. Dancers came and went. Wine flowed.

Through the flames, he saw Caspian offer a hand to Susan. She squinted up at him with a smile that promised trouble and allowed herself to be pulled to her feet.

“I do not know this dance,” Peter heard Caspian say.

Susan drew him close. “I’ll teach you.”

Peter lost count of the faces. Someone tied a ribbon to his wrist. Someone else stole it away. The fire was a constant heat and it seemed every second dancer had a drink in their hand, which they shared with abandon. Peter shed his tunic, then his shirt, sweat rolling as drink, fire, dance, and music all took hold of him and swept him along. The night seemed to take root and grow inside him. A living thing, it stretched out its arms to the stars. Peter did the same.

Someone grabbed Peter and pulled him back into the dance. This partner was a maenad, her black hair wild with vine leaves, her arms strong at his waist. Smiling, she lifted a cup to his mouth. A juice dark and sweet rolled onto his tongue; burned as it flowed down his throat. The maenad’s fingers were light as she settled an ivy crown on his hair, possessive as they linked in the small of his back. Peter threw back his head and laughed at the joy of it all.

Across the fire, Lucy had her back against a green-skinned person, mimicking their movements as they danced.

Edmund passed through, hand in hand with a woman in the felt trousers and embroidered vest of a northerner.

Susan and Caspian were nowhere to be seen.

Teeth bared in a grin, Peter’s maenad pulled him into a ring of revellers circling the fire with arms linked. These hooted and shrieked as he joined arms with them.

Peter’s skin hummed. Drumbeats replaced his pulse and stars filled his vision. They bled gold and red at the fire’s edge. Sweat rolled down his neck.

Laughing, the maenad unlooped her arms, pulling them free of the circle, spun Peter around and launched him to his next partner. He put his arms around the first body he collided with. This dancer held him close, arms around his waist until he caught the rhythm again. Satisfied, they moved their hands moved to his hips and leaned back so he could breathe without fighting for the space.

Peter was having trouble staying upright. Everything was so hot and loud and close. Letting his partner hold him, he closed his eyes and tipped his head back.

The cymbals had dropped away. Now lutes and rapid tinny drums dominated the music, twining through the bone-deep thud of minotaur bass drums.

Peter’s partner slipped an arm free of his and cupped the base of his skull, pressing a thumb to his cheek. With a sigh, Peter let his head roll forward. His temple bumped gently against theirs. The hair beneath his nose smelled of green growing things and sweet-sharp sap.

A yell of approval erupted by Peter’s ear. A body jostled theirs. Only reluctantly did Peter open his eyes and gaze down at his wife.

She peered darkly up at him with eyes a black glitter amid a face daubed with the dryads’ victorious ochre. He hair hung thick with green buds and ribbons; her fingers were gentle on the back of his neck. By firelight, she didn’t seem so remote as in the grove.

“I missed you,” Peter murmured. He could barely make himself out of the pulse of the music, floating as much as standing in the sway of bodies and heat.

“I know, dearheart. I missed you as well.”

A rough thumb stroked his cheek. Of the thousand things he’d imagined saying, none came to mind. He rested their foreheads together and concentrated on the feeling of their chests rising and falling.

The linen shift she wore was as damp as his shirt had been. Peter linked his arms at the small of her back. “I could do with a drink,” he said.

A shudder of laughter rippled through her. “My king, you have had more than enough.” Her mouth carried a wry twist when he opened his eyes. Her hand slipped into his. “Come.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be a two-parter, but every time I tried to write through to the end, they kept telling me there were important bits in the middle and it stretched out to like double the first chapter. So.


	3. I Can Hear Myself Singing That Song

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I can see myself_  
>  _I look peaceful and pale_  
>  _But underneath_  
>  _I can barely inhale_  
>  _I can hear myself singing that song_  
>  _Over and over until it belongs to me ___  
> \--Sarah Bettens, "All Of This Past"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're done! I'm not fully hapy with it, but she is fiNITO!
> 
> Beta-ing would be TREMENDOUSLY appreciated, but this being the holiday season, I understand everyone is super busy. <3

The chill of the caves cooled Peter’s face and body as they passed into the How. He became aware of having taken off his boots at some point: the stone and sand were cold and gritty on the soles of his feet.

It was not to the Pevensies’ large cavern near the war chamber she led him. Off a quiet, narrow corridor, a curtain was tied aside to reveal a small chamber roughly hewn and lit only by a simple brazier. Peter watched her take flint from an alcove and strike a spark into the oil lamp beside it. Light flared.

This was a simple cavern; no fine carvings or antique banners here. Only the brazier, the oil lamp on the shelf, and a nest of bracken and blankets in one corner. Eliaahn moved past him to fasten the curtain door closed.

Peter turned to comment that he hadn’t thought Eliaahn held inside quarters but found her mouth on his. Her fingers tangled in the ivy crown.

Pulling away, she brought it down to see. Once again her eyes were unreadable.

Peter tugged it from her grasp and set it aside.

Her gaze dropped to his chest when he turned back. With a line between her brows, she laid a palm over the place where he ought to have a corded scar. A fight with a minotaur, age twenty. Again, Peter was reminded of the time between them.

She didn’t resist being drawn into his arms, or Peter’s forehead nudging her own, but her gaze didn’t shift from that unmarred spot. Her shift slipped to the ground. Unlike her hands, he found the skin of her back smooth. She was warm and solid against him—thighs, hips, bellies together as they should be. So close that his skin prickled. Every fibre of him pulled toward her.

How different must he seem to her? More different than she to him?

She still frowned at that spot. Her fingertips flexed almost imperceptibly as if to discover that the scar had only been hidden from sight by some cruel magic.

He drew her gaze up from it and kissed her.

…

Afterward they lay face to face atop the blankets speaking in hushed voices.

Eliaahn touched his face. “Aslan, you look so young.”

Peter caught her hand with a faint smile. “So do you, for a dowager queen over a thousand years old. Does it bother you?”

So lightly he barely felt it, she extended a finger from their joined hands to move his fringe aside and trace the line of another scar. This one was older than the first: a stray cricket ball some years before the Pevensies’ stay with Professor Kirk. This one, he had kept.

Curling her finger back, she blinked languidly. “No.”

Loud voices and scuffing feet sounded in the corridor. Peter started upright.

Belatedly he realised that no one would care if he were found here, in bed with his wife.

Eliaahn was watching him when he lay down. Her eyes were veiled again. The brazier popped, dying. Several coals dropped through the grate to the floor.

Without speaking, she rolled to her feet to restore them.

Peter settled onto his back, studying the striations of the stone above his head. The grey was veined with white and a mossy green like old wood. Had he really been away so long? That he would fret to be caught in bed with his wife? The brazier rattled as Eliaahn fished the coals back into it and braced another log above them. Peter scrubbed his face with a sigh. So long indeed.

The bedding dipped. “Move over.”

“I’m High King,” he said archly, automatically. He uncovered his eyes and raised his brows at her. “This is my bed now.”

Kneeling by his hip, Eliaahn raised an eyebrow of her own. “You have your own bed, _Majesty_. This one is mine.”

Peter allowed a broad, lazy smile and wriggled himself more comfortable.

“Fine,” she said. “Then I shall lie atop you.”

Peter opened his mouth to say that was fine by him but wheezed as an elbow caught his sternum. “Villainess!”

Eliaahn laughed, unexpectedly free and light. It was the laugh of the day a celebrant handfasted them before all of Cair Paravel. Peter grabbed her by the waist and rolled her beneath him.

…

“Long ago,” he said, running a hand along her bare back, “Aslan said you had work left undone.”

The lamp had burned low. It must have been shortly before dawn.

“Do you think…” He trailed off. “Before the hunt for the White Hart, the last time we saw him—he reminded you never to lose touch with where you came from, didn’t he?”

Eliaahn’s face was turned away. She didn’t reply.

Peter’s hand flattened on her thickened waist. “Why did the trees join the battle?”

“Queen Lucy spoke to them.”

“ _I_ spoke to them. I know Lu’s nicer than me but—” He laid a cheek on her shoulder blade. “What really happened?”

“Queen Lucy spoke to them. She reminded them of the Hundred Year Winter.” Eliaahn paused. Then, so quietly Peter nearly missed it: “But she is not a tree. She could not _show_ them memories of a time before their years… so I did.”

Peter pondered that. “Do you think,” he said at last, “that perhaps he always intended for you to go with the trees when they retreated, and to bring them back when Narnia most needed saving? That perhaps he knew the Telmarines were coming and sent us _all_ away so we could return in Narnia’s hour of greatest need?”

“If so,” she said savagely, quietly, “then he has manipulated us all, again.” She sat up and scooped her gown off the floor. “And I am no chess piece to be moved about at anyone’s whim.”

She yanked the dress over her head and slipped out of the cavern. The curtain flapped forlornly in her wake, both fastenings ripped free from the wall.

…

The company moved to the castle – Caspian’s castle – the next morning. It took them most of the day amid the festive atmosphere of a parade. Many of the Narnians elected not to accompany them; some would stay near the How whilst they reunited with all their lost kin, others chose to return to their home and begin rebuilding. A vast majority of the trees, so bold and vital in the Second Battle of Beruna as it had come to be called, made their way slowly back to their hills and glades—though a few lively specimens had already trailed roots across the path to Castle Telmar and planted themselves around the town in preparation for Caspian’s arrival, thoroughly unnerving the residents.

Under the new avenue, the party advanced in a cloud of music and goodwill. Not a few Narnians were lost to parties and reunions by the road. (Lucy, Peter had no doubt, was one of these, judging by her mysterious appearances and disappearances throughout the day.) The rest of the trees began their journeys home at a decidedly more stately pace—rivers of green and silver flowing through the land like honey.

Drawn to a halt on a low hill above the procession, Peter shaded his eyes to look back along their path at one of these lines.

“Scowling won’t make her magically appear any more here than it did in Finchley,” said Susan. She was watching him not unsympathetically. “And scowling at me won’t change that. Come on. Caspian says he wants to talk to you about the changes in the defences as we ride into town.”

Reluctantly, Peter turned his horse and followed her down the hill back to the line. Part of him feared Eliaahn had returned to the hills with the others. Another more hopeful voice said that now the Pevensies were back, she wouldn’t just leave without saying goodbye.

There was a third voice that asked why not, when the Pevensies had done exactly that, but Peter kicked it away and geed his horse up the road to Susan.

…

Riding into town was a queer experience. For long-standing Telmarine subjects, the townsfolk seemed peculiarly glad to have new leader.

The procession rode through petals and streamers and cheering people in their most colourful clothes. It was not unlike entering Cair Paravel after the first Battle of Beruna: everything scrambling to catch up on a hundred years of missed blooming.

A rosy sunset came pink and gold between the buildings. Townsfolk clapped and sang and played music from bridges and arcaded corners. This bright, noisy place was not at all the sepulchre through which the failed raiders had fled in the dead of night.

Caspian was in his element. Susan glanced at him every so often with a soft, secret smile that put an abiding ache in Peter’s chest. He found it difficult to turn his mind from it.

“Smile,” murmured another rider. Lucy, her braids of the morning all undone and replaced with flowers and feathers and greenery, tipped her head. Her horse must have stopped by the way to make its own greetings: Lucy now rode a unicorn. “Smile,” she repeated. “They’re happy to see us. We ought to be happy to see them too.”

Peter smiled, but tightly.

Lucy rolled her eyes. “Not the Edmund-put-fish-guts-in-my-boots one. A real one.” She tugged lightly at the unicorn’s mane and fell back in the column.

The reprieve was short-lived: as he rounded the next corner, she popped out of an alley and threw a basketful of petals directly into his face.

When Peter had soothed his horse, he pulled a face at Lucy. She and her unicorn made identical innocent moues. Peter tried to frown reproachfully for a good long second before he found laughter bubbling up from his chest.

Lucy grinned with cheeky satisfaction. She easily dodged the few petals he managed to snatch from the air and throw in retaliation, and asked the unicorn to trot ahead so she could better see a group of otters performing acrobatics.

Peter followed with mood much improved.

…

Queen Prunaprismia met them in the first courtyard of the castle. Her father stood behind her, as before, though without the Lord Chancellor’s seal of office this time. Townsfolk and Narnians pressed forward on the bridge to watch the spectacle, hanging over walls and climbing onto the rails. How many times in their lives would they witness the dismantling of a dynasty and the foundation of another?

After the open good cheer of the town, the reception offered by the Telmarine dignitaries was reserved to the point of chilliness.

Yet Prunaprismia held a better relationship with her nephew than had her husband. Even after their discussions at the How, it was plain from Caspian’s posture that some awkwardness remained, but he had no fear of her.

Nor, Peter added with a touch of something that was not quite wry pride, did Caspian think much of the guard arrayed in ceremonial rank and armour behind her.

Also new to this tableau was the nurse at Prunaprismia’s side bearing an armful of frothy lace and linen. In a lull in the speaking, a low squall was heard. Prunaprismia half-turned toward it before catching herself; Caspian’s magnanimous smile became strained. Both recovered admirably.

Peter only half-listened to the formalities exchanged by aunt and nephew. His attention was on the child. The nurse bounced the infant prince gently with eyes trained on Caspian.

At a gesture, the Lord Chancellor stepped forward with a plush green cushion. Cradled on it was a gilded ceremonial sword. Prunaprismia lifted this aloft for all to see, fingers deft to avoid being cut by its decidedly unceremonial edge. The hilt was wrapped with entwined silver and gold wire, set with opaque green stones. The pommel was fashioned into an eagle with wingtips meeting over its head.

“Behold the Sword of Telmar,” declared Prunaprismia, enunciating so that all could hear and understand her. “Forged for Caspian the Conqueror. Now to be wielded by your rightful king—” Peter didn’t miss the subtle working of her throat. “—Caspian the Tenth.”

Caspian’s eyes were locked on the sword as if he’d never seen anything so beautiful or terrible in all his life. Peter wasn’t certain whether Caspian would have it melted down or maintained as a remembrance, but it surely would have no place in future ceremony.

So carefully it might have been made of glass, Prunaprismia lowered the blade into Caspian’s hands.

At another gesture from her, the Lord Chancellor turned to the arrayed guards and spread his palms. As one, the guards lay down their weapons.

Prunaprismia lifted her chin to her nephew. “Telmar is yours.” So saying, she dipped into a curtsey just a shade deeper than required from one ruler to another.

Caspian passed the sword to his lady minotaur and embraced his aunt.

…

The welcoming party in town had begun before the Narnian procession even set foot on its cobbled streets and didn’t stop for several days. Inside Castle Telmar, the former Queen had prepared lavishly to demonstrate that there were no hard feelings.

(That the resources spent were no longer hers to lavish slipped by many people. It did not ecape the Pevensies, nor Caspian.)

Peter was not surprised to find Eliaahn absent from the initial staid pleasantries and mingling. A valet informed him that while she – like the Pevensies - had been offered an ambassadorial suite, she had declined—preferring to sleep in the woods with the other Narnians for whom the castle lacked adequate accommodations.

The young Telmarine wrinkled his nose at the implication of sleeping in the dirt. He failed to smooth it away quickly enough once he recalled to whom he spoke. Blushing a brilliant red, the Telmarine retreated amid mumbles about finding the High King a wardrobe to suit the festivities planned for evening.

After the course of their conversation at the How, Peter had determined that it would be best to wait for his wife to come to him rather than seek her out and be rebuffed. He wasn’t certain he could bear that just presently.

…

Prunaprismia’s grand feast was opulent but neglected to take into account the tastes of non-human Narnians. Susan’s narrowing eyes as she regarded a dish of fava beans stewed with chorizo and thick lumps of bacon fat told of intense internal debate as to whether it was a deliberate slight or a misstep. Lucy was merely incensed.

Wryly, and with new equanimity, Caspian directed servants to the encampment in the woods to fetch supplies and the personnel to prepare them appropriately. Susan regarded him approvingly. Catching her eye, he dipped his head into his wine goblet to hide the blush that accompanied his smile.

Peter drank as well.

…

There were no gardens around Castle Telmar. Telmarine sensibilities ran to small, courtly lawns boxed in by tightly-pruned shrubs and vast tracts of paving and stone. Into these courtyards and terraces flooded feast attendees to witness the first after-dinner delights.

The grand feast was followed by a grander display of fireworks. Peter took great pleasure in observing Telmarines soothing the disturbed nerves of new Narnian friends who had never before encountered these ferocious things. New acquaintances pointed out shapes and fantastic colours. Peter overheard one unique pair in intense discussion of the chemistry involved.

Peter stayed with his siblings to watch the show—figureheads as they were again.

Only when the last sparks had fallen and the revellers set to dance and recitations of courtly poetry did he depart the terrace, unobtrusively and with intent to evade both the crowds and questions as to how he thought Caspian would fare.

Away from the hordes, Castle Telmar was quiet. The stone of the walls was cool beneath his fingers. The stern corridors had an austerity as different to the atmosphere outside as it was to the airy sandstone colonnades of Cair Paravel. The contrast was soothing. Allowed him to clear and quiet his mind.

While the main passages were brightly lit – decorated with abandon and thrumming with partygoers – these back ways were unlit. Peter passed through bars of shadow and starlight unremarked.

At a junction, he paused. A carving on the keystone of an arch looked familiar: a stern-eyed man with sunken eyes, glowering from a shield.

Peter had been here before. He had passed this way during—

Turning his mind deliberately the memory, he took a narrow side passage—a servant’s way. It terminated at a spiralling staircase. Peter followed this upward.

No black-helmed enemies clattered down to meet him. No Narnian blood smeared the steps.

There was no mob backed against the portcullis he sighted through a window. No one to leave behind.

And yet…

He emerged on the saddle between two towers. Everything seemed small from up here: Caspian learning a dance from his minotaur, the twenty-piece orchestra playing on Prunaprismia’s favoured terrace, the bonfires in the town and beyond. Narnia rolled silver and dusty blue into the distance.

But it wasn’t Cair Paravel. It lacked the sea. It lacked the crash of waves, the cawing of Cair Paravel’s resident crow murder, the laughter of mermaids in the bay. It lacked the simple fact of being Peter’s home. 

Movement above the battlement caught his eye. At the top of the far tower, so still he wouldn’t have noticed her in the gloom but for her gilding of firelight, was Eliaahn. She leaned into a notch in the crenulations to watch the revelry below.

Despite his earlier resolution to wait for her to come to him, he crossed the battlement to the dark doorway of her tower.

She made no move as he emerged from the stairs. Taking up a position beside her drew no comment. Peter rested his elbows on the wall as she had and studied her at leisure.

She wore a simple gown of Old Narnian style. No face-paint tonight; no baubles, no ribbon. The lines around her mouth and eyes cut deeply in the shadows.

It was chilly up here in the wind, away from the bonfires in the courtyards. Peter wished he’d thought to bring a cloak. He cast his eyes down to see what she saw.

Below them, Narnians and Telmarines celebrated alike. The castle’s grand promenade squares had all been remorselessly co-opted for firepits. Good, clean soot was slowly erasing the ornate mosaics of Telmar’s eagle and other noble crests. Circling each fire were trestle tables of flagons and casks; great oaken kegs of beers and ales; pyramids of mugs and glasses and fingerfoods; benches for the weary; cases of instruments and finery pilfered from the quarters of deposed nobility. Revellers twirled silk scarves and flashed jewellery of fine metals; played abalone-inlaid tambors and tipped cups of offerings from Miraz’s private cellars into each others’ mouths.

“I thought the festivities at the How were wild,” Peter observed, “but they seem bent on outdoing themselves tonight.”

Eliaahn was silent.

Peter looked to see what stuck her tongue and was taken aback. no trace of the laughing, yielding woman from the other night softened her face. He was in the cool company of the wildling from the mountains.

He cleared his throat and cast about for something to say. “I had thought to see you tonight… Caspian kept us busy readying the realm for him to take the throne, but…”

 Eliaahn raised her eyes from the fires. Peter thought she would finally look at him but she directed them overhead. The stars, he realised. She sought the stars.

Lapsing into silence, he raised his eyes as well.

The stars here were so different from the ones over England. These burned with a clarity, a ferocity that made the skies over London – even over Professor Kirk’s estate – seem pallid and weak. This sky blazed.

And soon they would leave it behind forever.

The temperature seemed to drop several degrees. The wind that had been gently carding his hair now slapped him in the face, stealing away the heat of the fires and scouring him through layers of velvet, lawn, and lace. The parapet stone grated his fingertips.

“I told Pellës of these stars,” said Eliaahn.

Sick and at sea with his realisation, Peter looked to her jerkily.

“I told him of the stories they tell,” she said. “The peoples shown there. I told him you came from a different sky.”

Peter blinked against the burning in his eyes. “What did he say to that?”

At last she met his gaze. “He said that one day he would see that sky, and he would know you.”

Her hand was stiff on the battlement when Peter covered it with his own. Her fingers interlocked with his. Briefly she gripped them with the fervour of a thousand years of loneliness. Leaning into him, she squeezed as tightly as possible without breaking bone.

Then she withdrew her hand.

She didn’t move away but stood, just beyond touching, with her arms aligned to Peter’s. They remained by the wall chilled and shivering long after the fires went out.

…

Susan woke Peter at dawn. Her hair was barely brushed and her face untouched by any of the powders and rouges her maid insisted were the minimal requirement for public appearance.

“He wants to speak to us,” Susan said, her voice sleep-rough. “Come on.”

They detoured via a small servants’ kitchen to purloin pastries and a flask each of strong tea and then, fortified, went to hear what the Lion had to say.

…

Drastic alterations were being made to the castle and surrounds. Walls were knocked down, iron grilles pried free, doors unbarred. A veritable squadron of dryads and nature spirits who had taken on the starkness and exhaustion of the land drifted here and there looking mightily pleased with themselves. Caspian and the Pevensies returned from a ride through the countryside that had begun to sprout anew and found that the very causeway of the castle had run green with morning glory and moonflowers. Trees and shrubs and flowering vines of a hundred kinds spidered out from the castle’s bedrock, greening every crack and crevice and dripping from overhangs.

Peter reined in his horse to let a dryad in the shape of a plume of apple blossoms float across his path and contemplated asking her where he might find Eliaahn, but thought better of it. After the previous night he was more uncertain than ever how things between them stood.

…

Lucy appeared at his side that afternoon as he copied the former Master At Arms in a Telmarine short-sword manoeuvre. Her face was tear-streaked. Peter didn’t need to hear what she had to say, but he let the other man go and approached her with head held high.

Aslan had spoken.

…

…

The day the Pevensies announced their departure for the following day, Caspian declared that there would be a farewell celebration to set their memory into the land’s very bones.

That everything pulled together so quickly was a testament to both the regard in which the Kings and Queens of Old were held, and to the love of the people for their freshly-minted King Caspian of Narnia.

This time, Peter stayed for the whole party. He danced with dignitaries, and with servants. He tried to play a faun flute. He swapped goblets with dwarves, and clapped as Caspian and Susan near-flawlessly executed a round in a new style of dance that fused Old Narnian and modern Telmarine steps. He embraced old friends and new ones.

Only as the mood began to turn melancholy did he make his escape.

He could not be with people for this. All day he had smiled when he wanted to shout, and laughed when he wanted to rage. Even if it had sometimes been genuine, the strain of forcing it now had become too much.

Light-fingering a flask of the Lord of the Household’s strongest fortified wine, he slipped away.

Instead of climbing, he descended. Into the belly of the castle he went, following a vague memory of Caspian’s description. The flask bumped gently against his leg.

Behind a storeroom, he found the bolt-hole staircase that the greenthumbs had been using to work their mischief on the castle’s bedrock.

At what he judged to be the level of the bridge, he brushed up against something soft and yielding on the wall. He raised the torch to it. A finger of moss swelled from the mortar.

Peter brushed it with a finger. Damp.

With fingertips to its softness, he followed it down. Here and there, slit windows had been knocked out of the rock, opening the corridor to the night. The moss thickened and spread and then gave way to threadlike tendrils of creeper. These turned to clusters of tiny white flowers and Hanging Beauty around raw new windows, orange buds still tightly furled.

Some twelve levels down by his estimation was a stout wooden door, no longer disguised but propped wide open to a grove of beech saplings just a little taller than him.

It was dark down here: all the gathered light of torches and braziers and bonfires above projected upward—not enough to pale the sky but enough to make Peter feel that he was picking his way down from the sky into the heart of the earth. He peered into the gloom. This, he recognised as his eyes adjusted, was the opposite side of the castle to the privies and latrines: where that was a sheer drop from ramparts to canyon floor, this side was stepped with natural terraces for a few hundred feet below the foundations.

The crescent moon was slim, but he left his torch by the door regardless; there was starlight enough to find his way. With all the greenery and foot traffic that had trekked over the formerly stark shelves recently, thread-fine trails were plain to see.

They turned out to be trickier to follow. Peter hadn’t thought the Telmarines had any satyr in them, but he began to reconsider. Without haste, he wandered. These saplings weren’t walking trees, Peter knew, but they had a curious aliveness to them that he hadn’t felt since before the White Hart. The land was waking up to its old friends at last. 

He passed the narrow stairs that wound down to the canyon floor—barely wide enough for a single person, and steeper than he’d like to think of taking in complete darkness, at speed. Whether or not any Telmarine had ever attempted escape that way, he didn’t know, but he wasn’t certain they would’ve survived the trek.

Here and there amid the trees sat hazy peaceable figures, as in the field before the How, most humming dryad songs and swaying gently with the breeze. He passed a satyr sprawled on a thatch of heath; a double-flute was at the satyr’s lips and a nymph somnolent beside him with head on his thigh. Neither acknowledged Peter beyond a lazy smile.

The trail terminated in a sloping shelf overhanging a pool. Here an aqueduct the naiads had helped install emerged from the castle in a slender waterfall, gathering in a shallow stone bowl before falling into open air. The pearling spray was lost to gloom before halfway to the canyon floor.

On this shelf, almost as expected, he found Eliaahn.

Creeping vines were curling around her feet as she sat there, others through her fingers. They thickened as she hummed to them, leaves unfurling and tendrils coiling out. Lucy used to sit in the back garden in Finchley singing to the strawberry patch. She had never succeeded in coaxing the vivacity of Narnian plants from it.

There was no bitterness or hardness in Eliaahn tonight. The past was not a barrier between them. It simply was, like the tides.

She, like he, only wanted to dwell in the hanging hours before dawn.

Taking a seat beside her, careful of the plants, Peter let the silence mellow. Sounds of their surrounds filled in the silence: the shush of water, wind in the trees, and the humming of dryads, all layered through with the piping of satyrs too far away to feel truly real at present.

Lulled, Peter loosed the flask from his hip. He took a steady draught. It was warm going down. Nowhere near as strong as the maenad’s juice, or as bitter as the centaur’s throat-scorching brew. There was a sweet note, too. Detachedly, he realised that some part of his brain had directed him to the fortified wine rather than the whiskey because Eliaahn had always preferred sweetness in her drink to smoke.

 He offered the flask to her. She regarded the hand carefully, as if inspecting it for snakes or thorns, and then took the flask and sipped. Licking her lip, she returned it and settled back on her hands. Peter did the same. Eliaahn eyed at him contemplatively. Then she drew in a breath.

This tune had a distinct melody. Peter sank back until he lay flat on the stone, head by Eliaahn’s leg. The rock was still warm from the sun. Absently, her hand drifted to his hair and settled there.

He listened to her as if from afar, eyes on the sky. They had lain like this many times before the White Hart. Fingertips scratched gently at his scalp. He was melting into the rock. Or perhaps he was dissolving. Floating up into the sky, mingling with the stars. Like the smoke of the memorial pyres. Like his son.

He pondered the direction his thoughts were taking, a step outside himself.

Drunk wasn’t how he would have chosen to spend his last night in Narnia. Still he wasn’t there yet. And it was better than weeping.

The last night. The last time to lie at ease on the grass and look up at the Narnian sky. The last time to simply _be_ , as if he had all the time in the world. He sighed, detached from the clench of his guts. There was so little time.

Unlike on the roof, there was no panic. There was no sudden rush of fear, or desire to grab at the rock beneath him as though he might cease to exist if he didn’t.

It was a lullaby Eliaahn was humming. Wordless as it was, Peter could almost hear the lyrics in his head.

He had heard it before. He just hadn’t remembered. “You sang that to Pellës,” he said dreamily. “Didn’t you?”

Eliaahn trailed off. “Yes.”

Languidly he rolled his head to rest against her thigh. “Sing it to me?”

She took another draught from the flask. Swallowing without haste, she wiped her mouth and slipped the flask back into his hand. As he drank, she began from the opening words.

“ _Uyusun da büyüsün_ —”

It wasn’t the tongue of Narnia. Still he heard the words, the way she’d explained them once: -- _sleep._ _Little goat, little goat, why did you wander so far from home? You cannot hear the shepherd’s song, you’ve walked so far alone. Just wait, just wait, little goat, you’ll see. You’re not too far to return. When the moon come,s she’ll guide you home—_

At the second verse, she leaned back against a rise in the rock. Peter rolled over and pulled himself up until he lay with his face on her stomach, arm curled around her hips. They had lain like this a thousand years ago on the eve of the hunt for the White Hart. Then, his ear had pressed to the swell of her belly and all possibilities stretched out before them.

At the seam of her tunic was a patch of bare skin. Thumbing it, Peter closed his eyes and let the lullaby wash through him. Her flank was warmer than at the How; the flesh more yielding. More human.

“I’m sorry,” he said thickly.

Eliaahn’s hand on his back was soft. “I know, dearheart.” She carried on with the verse. _Come home to where the earth is soft, where the grass grows among the rocks. Ahead there’s only sand and stones. Little goat, little goat, come home._

…

Susan woke Peter before dawn again. This time she knelt by his side fully dressed, with her hair coiffured.

She tried to speak. The words stuck in her throat. She tipped her head and gave him a helpless look. Peter couldn’t even try to return her weak smile. As she stood and brushed down her gown, he turned automatically to the other side of the bed. It was empty.

Susan kindly didn’t say anything as he got up. Kinder still: if she saw the tears, she turned her head so she didn’t see Peter wipe them away.

He followed Susan as she solicited an apple and flagon of juice from a bleary-eyed servant but declined a share in either. As if underwater, they went to meet the Lion.

…

Aslan joined them as they turned down a gallery open at one side to the sky.

At the eastern edge of the world, the sun was rising. Peter still expected to see the sea—the bay beyond Cair Paravel, the Royal Navy riding at anchor.

Instead of the smells brine and seaweed, a red dawn carried the stables and charred wood into the gallery. The walkers moved aflame.

Instead, the land went on far beyond the horizon: towns, then hills, then plains, and none of it the Narnia Peter knew.

 On Aslan’s other side, Susan spoke quietly. Neither she nor the lion attempted to draw Peter into conversation.

…

Aslan led the assembly to a terrace at the edge of town overlooking the castle, bridge and mesa. A great tree twined up from the centre of it.

Peter paused before entering the square. He could not make himself take the final steps to join his siblings in a line before the dais. A heaviness to the air announced her presence beside him.

“Our time is done.”

Peter had heard words similar before. Numbness swept through him as Lucy glanced back to see what was keeping him. Aslan was regally climbing to the terrace—the dais.

“It doesn’t have to be,” Peter replied, surprised at the calmness of his own voice. He turned to her and took both her hands in his. “The threat is gone. Your work—our work is done.”

A line creased her brow. “If that were so,” she said a touch bitterly, “you would stay.”

“Aslan hasn’t said we have to leave.”

The smile she gave him was tired and sad. “He hasn’t told you to stay.”

Peter looked to his siblings. “I don’t know what’s about to happen. But even if he did… Dearheart, come with us. This isn’t our world.”

So sweetly Peter thought it might kill him, Eliaahn lifted his hands to her mouth and kissed first one and then the other. “No, it isn’t. But it is mine.” She drew her hands from his. “It is where I was born, where I have lived. It is where I buried my son.”

“We could…” The words trickled off in Peter’s throat. He looked to Aslan.

The Lion had taken up a position on the dais. He returned Peter’s stare unblinking.

“Then—” Peter reached into his shirt and pulled the leather pouch containing the medallion over his head. He pressed it into Eliaahn’s palm. “—you should have this.”

Her fingers spread wide. For the first time, her smile wasn’t bitter in the slightest. “I have carried this for thirteen hundred years.” Curling Peter’s fingers around it one by one, she pushed it gently back to his chest. “It is your turn.”

“Eliaahn—”

“Pellës.” Tears greened on her lashes. “I could not leave him behind if I wanted to.”

“It may not be what we think,” Peter said. One last attempt.

“It may also be precisely what we think.”

Peter twisted his fingers to catch hers. He cupped the nape of her neck. “In another life…”

Eliaahn pressed her forehead to his. “Under another sky.” She kissed him sweetly on one cheek and then the other. “From one lifetime to another, my love.”

Peter held on as long as possible as she drew away. It was her eyes that he held until the last: lucid and dark and finally clear of shadows.

He climbed to the dais as if to battle, feeling the weight of his reality as never before. He knew before he took his place beside his siblings the way that Aslan’s plan would likely play out. He knew now what would likely be asked.

Caspian made his address. Aslan made his.

“Your ancestors,” said Aslan, “were seafaring brigands. Pirates, run aground on an island.”

He asked for volunteers to start anew there. Peter listened to the Great Lion speak with mingled trepidation and gladness for any who accepted the offer. It was a better chance than they could have had here, turning from reminder to reminder of what they had lost.

Miraz’s first lieutenant and Prunaprismia, her father ever-following, were the first to accept the offer. Caspian bowed his head to them with all the dignity of the great ruler Peter could see he would be. Aslan chose well for his younglings, Peter reflected, whatever else the Pevensies might have thought.

With babe in arms, Prunaprismia climbed the steps. Her jaw trembled the slightest bit. A brave woman, to trust her family to the unknown. She paused before Aslan a monument of dignified abdication and composure. Accepted his blessing without a flinch.

Peter’s estimation of her rose several notches.

Above them all began a great cracking and groaning. The Pevensies could not contain a step backward as the tree that arched above them began to twist and seemingly unravel. The crowd gave a cry of fear and wonder. Caspian glanced once to the Pevensives as if for reassurance that this was perfectly normal for Old Narnian magic, but even Lucy stood with open mouth and Peter couldn’t imagine their collective astonishment was comforting.

Caspian did not speak to his aunt as the party passed him by. They had said everything they needed.

The trio approached the parting with straight backs and entered.

They vanished.

Ugly muttering began immediately in the crowd and Peter knew, long before he spoke, what must be done to quell it. He was ready. It had taken a long time and a lot of pain, but at last he saw it clearly.

His hand closed on the medallion. The scars at his finger-joints no longer pained him, though the marks now cut deep.

Reepicheep spoke up before Peter could, but he allowed the mouse his gesture. Lion knew, Aslan had already decided on the course of action the day would take, and Peter was finally ready to trust again.

On a terrace that overlooked the greening castle, before a tree that opened into the space between worlds, Peter and Susan exchanged glances.

He intended to look only to Caspian, but his eyes were pulled beyond them to the archway Eliaahn had taken. The faces there held only passing familiarity. But from the stone of the arch spread moss like mortar, and he could smell pine sap on the wind.

“We’ll go,” he said.

Edmund started. “We will?”

“Come on. Time’s up.” Even as he said it, he felt his heart within him: not light but not suffering. This was not the end. “After all: we’re not really needed here anymore.”

Drawing his sword, he offered the hilt to Caspian.

“I will look after it until you return,” Caspian said fiercely.

“I’m afraid that’s just it,” said Susan. “We’re not coming back.”

Peter wasn’t sure whose heart was breaking more, but he knew that he had seen plainly the moment when Caspian’s cracked.

“We’re not?” quavered Lucy behind him.

He turned to her kindly. “You two are.” He indicated herself and Edmund as he returned to Susan’s side. “At least… I think he means you to.” In truth, he couldn’t say what Aslan meant to happen anymore. Once he’d had, if not a surety, then a certain amount of intuition. But now… He squinted at Aslan. The Lion gazed back impassive as ever.

“But why?” said Lucy plaintively to Aslan. “Did they do something wrong?”

So many things, thought Peter. He looked again to the moss burgeoning in the archway.

“Quite the opposite, dear one,” Aslan told her. “But all things have their time. Your brother and sister have learned what they can from this world. It is time for them to live in their own.”

“It’s all right, Lu” Peter said, taking her hands. “It’s not how I thought it would be…” Not at all. “…but it’s all right. One day you’ll see too.”

She gazed up at him tearfully, wanting more. _Needing_ more. Then she relaxed, and smiled.

Perhaps she still didn’t understand, but she had that infinite quality Peter struggled with: faith. Only having rediscovered it did he see it in her eyes as he felt it in his own. Which, he suspected, had been the purpose in bringing him back to this world.

“Come on,” he said to Lucy.

She smiled at him and, even if it was a little forced, he felt himself lighten further at the sight of it. It would be all right. Everything would be all right.

 

Lucy tried to be strong. She curtsied first to Caspian’s tutor, and then to Trumpkin. Nobody needed to avoid meeting the dwarf’s eye; he was doing a fine job of it himself. It didn’t disguise the tears welling up. Lucy broke first, as expected, and hugged him tightly.

Behind them, Susan approached Caspian. “I’m glad I came back,” she said haltingly.

Peter took the opportunity to gaze into Aslan’s eyes, hoping to find some shred of intimation of the great inscrutable plan the Lion was enacting. He found none, though the gaze was as compassionate and strangely sad as always.

“I wish we had more time together,” Peter heard Caspian say. All the things the new king wanted to say were audibly thick in his throat. Peter turned to watch the exchange.

“It would never have worked anyway.” Susan’s voice was brittle and light with levity like ricepaper.

“Why not?”

This levity was genuine: “I _am_ thirteen hundred years older than you.”

Caspian huffed a laugh in surprise. It seemed to lift a great deal of the weight from both of them.

Peter, Lucy and Edmund were waiting before the tree, gazing expectantly at Susan. At a loss for what else to say, she began to walk towards them—to leave Caspian standing alone at the edge of the dais. How did one compress a lifetime of potential into a moment?

Peter wished he knew the answer himself.

At her next step, Susan met his eyes. He wasn’t sure what she saw there, but a quicksilver something flickered across her face. She halted.

She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t leave without… what?

Without saying goodbye. Without it being _something_ to hold onto. Without it being something. She turned back.

It wasn’t the kiss that struck Peter as so monumental. It was the embrace afterward. He understood that. Felt it, at the level of his marrow, his skin, in every fibre of his being. 

This was why they had returned: to remember. To renew.

From somewhere behind the crowd circled up a plume of pale new leaves. It rose above the rooftops and drifted north.

The Pevensies left Narnia in a line. Edmund first, and then Peter, Susan, and finally Lucy, bringing the last breath of Narnia with her.

The moment they set foot back into the concrete and tile of Strand station, Peter drew in a lungful of stale, damp-smelling air. His siblings were warm and solid beside him; his school shirt stiff and scratchy. The thumps the school boys had given him an age ago, a moment ago, ached.

They were back.

Yet even with the lurch of a different reality – a different gravity, a different air – taking hold, he felt steadier than he had in a year.

…

He did not at first recognise the tall, dark young man who waded through the grass to meet them in the Endless Fields. Only as the stranger drew closer did Peter see that his eyes were Eliaahn’s. He walked with Peter’s purposeful stride.

A touch on Peter’s arm drew his attention. Eliaahn was at his side. In her hands, an ivy crown, run through with alpine poppies and blue thistle.

Pellës closed the final yards as Eliaahn offered Peter the garland, her own head already crowned with pine and oak.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Turkish lullabies are genuinely lovely and I heartily recommend that everyone go check some out. The words I used are NOT the words of Dahini Dahini Dadali Belek, but they suit more the Calormen we see.


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